Reframing India’s Palestine Policy

Religious Dimension

While national self-determination is a core issue, the Palestine question has another equally important dimension, namely religion. Besides its anti-colonial and anti-imperial aspects, the Palestine issue has a powerful Islamic dimension which played an important role in the evolution of the Indian policy. Even close to seven decades after its existence, many Arab and non-Arab Muslim countries and societies are still unable to come to terms with the Jewish State (Karsh & Kumaraswamy, 2008; Maoz, 2010). Some continue to see it as a transient phenomenon and not just another country in the Middle East. The end of the Cold War enabled some Muslim-majority countries in Central Asia and Africa to reverse their erstwhile opposition to Israel but many in rest of Asia and the Middle East are unable to make a transition. In the Middle East, only Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey have formal relations with Israel and even these are often under stress.

For many, the Arab–Israeli conflict is not an inter-state problem or rivalry but is rooted in the centuries-old Islamic paradigm toward the non-Muslim other, namely Dhimmi. According to an arrangement formally codified a few decades after the death of second caliph Omer, Islam offers limited protection to the followers of other Abrahamic faiths, namely, Judaism and Christianity (to the Zoroastrianism in Iran), in return for the latter accepting the pre-eminence of Islam. This arrangement enabled the People of the Book (Gilbert, 2011) or Dhimmi to practice their religion and maintain their lives and properties in return for them accepting the primacy of Islam in all their social engagement with the Muslims (Kumaraswamy, 2007). For centuries, this arrangement worked well, and as Bernard Lewis would describe in his Jews of Islam (1984), even the worst caliph could not be depicted as anti-Semite for that would imply willfully violating the Dhimmi arrangement. This was in contrast to the Christian Europe treatment of the Jews before socioreligious barriers came down and political rights were established in the wake of Renaissance and French Revolution.

Thus, the birth of modern political Zionism in the late nineteenth century challenged the 14-century-old Islamic narrative and approach toward the Jews being a “protected” subject of Islam. The idea of statehood took longer time to concretize, but the Zionists framed the Jews as a nation, not just a religious community and hence entitled to equality. This posed two fundamental challenges to Muslims world over. At one level, the Jewish nationalism challenged the Dhimmi arrangement and demanded Islam to grant political equality to the non-Muslim Jewish subjects and citizens. This was beyond the millet arrangement of the Ottoman Empire that granted limited communal autonomy for Jews and Christian groups.

Second, the Zionists sought to realize their nationalist demands and eventually sovereign rights, in a territory that was considered a part of the Islamic waqf, namely, Palestine. With the sole exception of the Crusades (1096–1291), the Holy Land remained under continuous Islamic rule since the army of the second caliph Omer captured Jerusalem in 637 AD, a few years after the death of Prophet Mohammed.

Therefore, the Muslim recognition of the Zionist political aspirations in Palestine meant the ending of the Dhimmi arrangement that existed since the mid-seventh century as well as ceding sovereign rights to them over a waqf land. It is within this larger theological–historical context one should situate and understand the overwhelming Muslim reluctance and opposition to Zionism and Israel. The Islamic roots of the question played a critical role in the evolution of India’s position in the 1920s when the Jews sought to realize their homeland project in Palestine.

Interestingly, with the sole exception of Gandhi, the Indian nationalists and post-1947 leaders and elites were unable to recognize and admit the religious dimension of the Palestine question. Writing in April 1921, shortly before the League of Nations granted Palestine as a British Mandate, Gandhi observed: “The Muslim claim Palestine as an integral part of Jazirat-ul-Arab (the Islamic land of Arabia). They are bound to retain its custody, as an injunction of the Prophet” (CWMG, 2000, p. 530). He went on to argue,

The Jews cannot receive sovereign rights in a place that has been held for centuries by Muslim powers by right of religious conquest. The Muslim soldiers did not shed their blood in the last war (that is, First World War) for the purpose of surrendering Palestine out of Muslim control.

In other words, according to Gandhi, the non-Muslims could not “acquire sovereign jurisdiction” over Palestine.

Not to be left behind, the Indian National Congress adopted a similar position. In the meeting in Lucknow in June 1921, the All India Congress Committee declared that “unless Jazirat-ul-Arab are freed from all non-Muslim control, there can be no peace and contentment in India” (Zaidi, 1985, p. 30). A couple of years later, the party demanded “the removal of alien control from the Jazirat-ul-Arab” (Zaidi, 1985, p. 32).

The Indian nationalists placing Palestine as an integral part of Jazirat-ul-Arab was the result of prevailing domestic conditions, namely the Khilafat struggle. The impending disintegration of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War and the loss of Arab territories to the European powers spurred the Indian Muslims to rally around the beleaguered Ottoman Sultan who was also the caliph (Minault, 1999; Ozcan, 1997). The Arab demand for freedom from the Ottoman yolk became subservient to their opposition to non-Muslim interference, control, or occupation of the Islamic territories, including Palestine. The mass Muslim upheaval over Khilafat provided an opportunity for the Congress Party to look for the vital but absent communal unity against the British. Led by Gandhi, the Party plunged into the explicitly religious Khilafat agenda and demanded the removal of non-Muslim control over areas that were considered Islamic (Nanda, 1989). While Gandhi was more pronounced than other Indian leaders, the demand was clear: Muslims must retain control over Jazirat-ul-Arab, especially Palestine, in perpetuity.

During this phase, both the Khilafat leaders and Gandhi had an exaggerated assessment of the role and influence of the Indian Muslims who at that time constituted the largest Muslim community not only within the British Commonwealth but also in the entire world. As subsequent events proved, both Britain and Turkey were indifferent to such claims and the Khilafat Movement ended in a failure when new Turkish Republic under Kemal Ataturk abolished the caliphate in March 1924. Along with this the Hindu–Muslim unity also collapsed.

The post-Khilafat phase witnessed two interesting developments which shaped the Indian position on Palestine. Domestically, the Hindu–Muslim unity over the Ottoman caliph proved temporary, and both communities were in search of common ground to overcome their mutual suspicions and misgivings. This was complicated by the return of Mohammed Ali Jinnah as League president, and under his leadership, the League presented itself as the exclusive voice of the Indian Muslims. This period also witnessed the League becoming vociferous in its condemnation of the British policy in Palestine and marked Palestine Day and organized meetings and protest actions in different parts of the country. The Palestine question enabled the League not only to consolidate its support among the Indian Muslims but also to exhibit its opposition to and distance from the British.

Furthermore, the Palestinian leadership under Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, was evolving the Arab response to the Balfour Declaration of 1917 which promised the British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. He did this by presenting the Jewish immigration to and political goals in Palestine as the twin threat to the larger Muslim world. As Omar Khalidi rightly observed, before the advent of oil era in the Middle East, “many in the Arab world looked up to India’s rich princes and businessmen for financial aid for religious and charitable project” (Khalidi, 2009, p. 55). Toward this purpose, a three-member Palestinian delegation visited India during November 1923–June 1924 and met various Indian Muslim leaders. Mufti also met Ali Brothers during Hajj pilgrimage in 1924 and 1926 (Kupferschmidt, 1978, p. 129) and in January 1931 offered and facilitated the burial of Muhammad Ali in the Haram al-Sharief in Jerusalem (Azaryahu & Reiter, 2015). Shaukat Ali played an important role in the convening of the Jerusalem Conference in December that year. Above all, the Mufti himself visited the Nizam of Hyderabad in July 1933 (Khalidi, 2009, p. 56) as part of his pan-Islamic campaign for Palestine.

These two factors, namely, political rivalry with the Muslim League and the pan-Islamic campaign by the Grand Mufti, considerably influenced the Congress thinking on Palestine. Unlike the League, however, the Congress Party projected its pro-Arab position, through the anti-imperialist frame. During the Khilafat phase, the Congress Party sought to use a religious cause to forge communal unity and this was no longer possible as pan-Islamism served the interests of the League and some of the leading figures of the Khilafat Movement were gravitating toward Jinnah’s argument of Muslim separatism. As a counter, the Congress was projecting itself as the representative of all the Indians irrespective of their religious faiths as opposed to the League’s demand to be recognized as the sole voice of the Indian Muslims.

This meant that its position, both internally and externally, has to be revolved around a secular non-religious paradigm and its opposition to British policy in India as well as in Palestine was presented through anti-imperialism. In both the cases, the Congress Party was not prepared to recognize and concede to the nationalist demands of the minority population and their aspirations for a separate statehood. The party’s opposition to Muslim separatism in India was extended to Palestine as well. The Congress could not support the Zionist demands in Palestine while opposing the League’s demand for Muslim separatism. This dilemma was resolved when under the leadership of Nehru the Congress Party presented its support for the Arabs of Palestine as a common cause in the fight against British imperialism. Thus, even while expressing its “sympathy for the plight of the Jews in Europe and elsewhere,” the prime focus of the Congress was anti-imperialism and the Jewish reliance on “the British armed forces to advance their special imperialism” (Zaidi, 1985, p. 55, emphasis added).

One could draw a parallel between the Indian position toward Palestine during the Khilafat phase and its emerging competition with the League a decade later. In the 1920s, Gandhi forged a common cause with the Arabs of Palestine by using the Indian Muslim sentiments toward the caliph, and in the 1930s, Nehru did the same by flagging in anti-British sentiments. In both the cases, the underlining aspect was domestic and was aimed at winning over or consolidating the Muslim support for the Congress. As one scholar observed in 1985,

the Palestine was important for India only insofar as it was a factor in Indian politics or in British imperial strategy—the latter often being reflected in the former. An Arab-Jewish riot in Palestine, in itself, did not matter very much in India. But it began to matter if it happened to fit into the scheme of things of any or all of three groups, British, Congress, Muslim. (Chawla, 1985, p. 51)

Thus, one has to recognize two interesting things; Palestine issue is not merely a nationalist cause but is deeply rooted in religion, and the Congress position was governed by its competition with the League for domestic Muslim support.

The acceptance of the Islamic narrative over Palestine is more apparent over the city of Jerusalem and its importance to all the three Abrahamic faiths. The intensity of the Jewish–Arab, Israeli–Arab, and later Israeli–Palestinian conflict has resulted in the Jewish claims to the city being rejected, contested, or marginalized. Until the June 1967 war, even non-Israeli Jews were prevented from praying at the Western Wall when the old city was under Jordanian occupation, and after the war, Israel’s claim to the old city has been contested by many Muslim countries and societies. Even the Oslo accord and the desire of both the parties to seek a political settlement have not inhibited a number of Palestinian and Muslim leaders, personalities, and ulema from rejecting the existence of a Second Temple in Jerusalem.

Driven by the conflict and contestation, some go the extent of not recognizing Jewish religious claims lest they influence if not transform into conceding political and sovereign claims over the old city. Reporting on the outbreak of the al-Aqsa intifada in September 2000, one Indian journalist remarked:

Palestinians, and Arabs in general can just not accept that Jews should have any right over their noble sanctuary. In the Palestinian opinion, Israel’s claim, that the mount on which the Haram stands covers the site of the first and second Jewish Temples, is based on sheer myth. (Menon, 2000)

This Islam-centric understanding of Jerusalem could be noticed in certain section of the Indian elites. Former diplomat-turned-politician and Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar authored a background paper for a conference organized by an American think tank in October 2016 that traced the history of Jerusalem only to Christianity (Aiyar, 2016).

The Islamic dimension of the Palestine question is missing in Indian debates thereby contributing to the oversimplification of a complex reality. This, in turn, is manifested in the discussions over the domestic influences of India’s Palestine policy.

Domestic Dynamics

Rationalizing the traditional pro-Palestinian position, an unnamed Indian diplomat accompanying President Mukherjee to Jordan, Palestine, and Israel was quoted as saying, “it’s a sensitive issue at home. We can’t afford to alienate sections of our population over this issue” (Johny, 2015). This is perhaps the maximum one could normally expect regarding the domestic inputs into India’s policy. During a public event in Jerusalem in July 2000, External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh broke away from the standard narrative and observed: “India’s Israel policy became a captive to domestic policy that came to be unwittingly an unstated veto to (sic) India’s larger West Asia policy.” Singh, the first External Affairs Minister to visit Israel, was criticized for taking Indian policies “to foreign shores” (Varadarajan, 2005).

Otherwise, locating the pro-Palestinian position within the domestic Indian context has been an anathema. With the sole exception of A. Appadorai (1981), mainstream Indian scholars eschewed discussing the role Muslims in shaping the country’s policy on Palestine or the wider Middle East. In recent years, coalition compulsions have resulted in the recognition of the role of Tamil Nadu in India’s Sri Lankan policy or of Bengalis in the Bangladesh policy. A similar approach toward the Indian Muslims and the Middle East has not got the attention. That the 130-million strong Muslims have a say in the foreign policy of a democratic country is too sensitive to admit or discuss.

The objective reality, however, is different, uncomfortable, and compelling. As discussed earlier, during the freedom struggle, the Palestine issue became a bone of contention for the Congress and Muslim League in their political contest over the support of the Indian Muslims. The Indian nationalist saw the First World War largely as a British attempt to not only defeat the Ottoman Empire but also weaken and dispossess caliph, then concurrently held by the Ottoman Sultan. This perception resulted in the Khilafat Movement whereby the Indian Muslims rallied behind the beleaguered Ottoman ruler and was supported by the Congress Party under the leadership of Gandhi. It was during this phase that the Congress Party began articulating its pro-Arab position vis-à-vis the Jewish nationalist aspirations in Palestine. Gradually, the political contest with the Congress for the Muslim support resulted in the League adopting a more vocal position Palestine which in turn increased the Congress support for the Arabs of Palestine.

The Congress–League political contest did not end with the partition of the Indian subcontinent but transformed into an Indo-Pakistan rivalry, especially in the Middle East. India used a secular, nationalist, and anti-imperialist narrative to establish its pro-Palestinian track record, while Pakistan flagged its Islamic credentials for the same purpose. The contestation became acute especially during periodic turbulences in the Middle East and India’s attempt to take part in the first Islamic summit conference held in Rabat in September 1969 was primarily motivated by the Pakistan factor (Singh, 2006). The pre-1947 Congress–League contest and the Indo-Pakistani rivalry after partition remained an enduring feature of India’s approach toward the Middle East. It was only after the end of the Cold War and normalization of relations with Israel that one could notice a calibrated Indian approach toward the region. As a result, Indo-Israeli bonhomie has been accompanied by more robust politico-economic engagements with countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, which were traditionally supportive of Pakistan.

There were other examples which underscore domestic factors while dealing with the Palestine issue. In early 1952, Prime Minister Nehru assured senior Israeli diplomat Walter Eytan that normalization of relations including the exchange of resident diplomatic missions would happen soon after the first Lok Sabha elections then under way (Eytan, 1952). This, however, did not happen or happened more than four decades later. Education Minister and senior Congress leader Maulana Abul Kalam Azad dissuaded Nehru from proceeding with normalization by offering two closely related rationales, namely, sentiments of Indian Muslims and Pakistan’s potential diplomatic maneuvers in the Arab world. According to Indian (Gopal, 1979, vol. 1, p. 170) and international (Brecher, 1951, pp. 571–572) accounts, Azad’s arguments convinced Nehru to abandon his plans in favor of normalization.

Interestingly, the rejection or non-recognition of the domestic influence Palestine has not prevented many from highlighting and criticizing the role played by the pro-Israeli lobby in shaping the Middle Eastern policy of the USA (Prashad, 2009). Likewise, some do not hesitate to attribute Rao’s 1992 decision and subsequent progress in the Indo-Israeli bilateral relations to the rise of Hindu nationalist elements (Kutty, 1994). Others viewed the growing bonhomie to ideological convergence between Likud in Israel and the BJP in India (Prashad, 2003).

Despite such trends toward the Jews in the USA and Hindus in India, similar arguments regarding Indian Muslims vis-à-vis Palestine or wider Middle East has not been part of the mainstream discourse within the country. To argue that Indian Muslims—who constitute the largest community after Indonesia—do not have an influence upon India’s Palestine policy is not compatible with India’s democracy and plurality. That the Muslim citizens do have a legitimate say in India’s Middle East policy is derided as a partisan and divisive argument and hence an informed academic discussion on the role of Indian Muslims vis-à-vis Palestine question has not taken place. Any discussion in this direction has been derided as parochial, motivated, and agenda-driven exercise. The idea that Indian Muslims have and could influence India’s policy has been seen as an affront to secular ethos of the country and an insult to the legacy of its founding leaders.

If the Muslim factor influenced India’s Palestine policy, how one could explain the 1992 normalization? Was Rao’s decision an anti-Muslim policy as some suggest? According to Foreign Secretary J.N. Dixit who attended the crucial cabinet meeting, senior Congress leader “Arjun Singh felt that this decision (that is, normalization of relations with Israel) might affect Muslim support for the Congress and went on to imply that establishing relations with Israel would be a departure from the Nehruvian framework of our policy” (Dixit, 1996, p. 311). The acceptance of the domestic factor in foreign policy discourse does not mean that Muslims have wielded a veto over Israel but indicate that the political elites perceived that Indian Muslims opposed normalization and acted accordingly.

Moral Righteousness

Normalization of relations with Israel in January 1992 was a sign of political realism on the part of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao to the new international political order. The end of the Cold War, disintegration of erstwhile ally—the USSR—and domestic economic crisis forced him to respond to new challenges facing India. Some attributed normalization to structural changes in international order (Pradhan, 2004) and other to pressures from the USA but undoubtedly normalization of relations with Israel signaled India’s willingness to break from the past.

Such a nuanced appraisal was unavailable during the pre-1992 era. The prolonged non-relations and uncritical acceptance of the official policy resulted in the pro-Palestinian Indian position being viewed merely as a moral issue in line with its position on decolonization or non-alignment. It is often forgotten that the moral content was more pronounced in the Palestinian issue, apartheid and decolonization, and less so in other international problems such as Hungary (1956), Czechoslovakia (1966), or Afghanistan (1979).

Moreover, India’s policy on Israel was in contrast to its stand vis-à-vis China and Pakistan, countries with whom it has territorial disputes and fought armed conflicts. India does not have any bilateral disputes with the Jewish State, but until 1992 it behaved as if even minimal diplomatic relations with it would be a deviation, dilution, and even affront to its pro-Palestinian credentials. The socialist and Hindu nationalist opposition often questioned this holier than though attitude of the Congress governments but the parameters set by Nehru in the early 1950s survived for over four decades. The Indian commitments to Palestinian cause came to be measured, highlighted, valued, and even rationalized only through the absence of diplomatic relations with Israel.

If non-relation with Israel was a moral position, normalization becomes an amoral if not immoral policy and therefore one has to look for an explanation that was more convincing and logical, especially in the light of the 1992 decision. It would be prudent to view India’s pro-Palestinian position before 1992 and its increasingly more balanced position since 1992 not through moral self-righteousness but a realist paradigm.

Indeed, the prolonged Indian strategy of relying on the Palestinian issue to further its interests in the Middle East was natural and even inevitable. During much of the Cold War era, India lacked political, diplomatic, economic, or strategic means to promote its foreign policy goals in the Middle East. The moral argument borne out of its non-violence freedom struggle did not survive the Sino-Indian conflict of 1962. The policy of non-alignment brought many friends, but his stand on issues like the Hungarian crisis dented Nehru’s credibility. For its part, Pakistan looked for allies in the Islamic Middle East and became a major concern for India and its position on the Kashmir issue. Until the economic reforms introduced in 1991 and the resultant growth, the Indian influence in the region was limited, and it gained little in 1962 from the Nehru–Nasser friendship (Agwani, 1963).

Under such circumstances of limited diplomatic influences, the Palestinian issue emerged as India’s preeminent if not exclusive instrument in furtherance of its interests in the Middle East. Its leaders and elites flagged “consistent” and unwavering support to the Palestinian cause and its non-relations with Israel to establish India’s pro-Arab credentials. This zero-sum approach was more visible in its reactions to the fire in the al-Aqsa mosque in September 1969 and the Arab-sponsored United Nations (UN) General Assembly resolution on Zionism in 1975. It is often forgotten that Palestinian self-determination and independent statehood entered the international political lexicon only in the wake of the Arab petro-power in the 1970s.

The failure to recognize political and economic compulsions behind India’s Palestine-centric Middle East policy was exposed when Rao reversed Nehru’s policy in 1992. Since non-relations was explained through the moral binary for over four decades, normalization of relations with Israel can only be viewed as an aberration, betrayal, dilution, and abandonment of the Palestinians. Critics of Rao viewed the new policy as an “immoral” act brought about by the end of the Cold War even though the Euro-centric bloc politics was not responsible for Nehru’s decision to defer normalization (Aiyar, 1993; Dasgupta, 1992; Ghosh, 2003). Many were unable to come to terms with the new situation and accused Rao and his successors of abandoning Gandhi and his moral position (Hariharan, 2014).

This dilemma was primarily due to the uncritical assessment of the foundations of India’s Palestine policy. Was India pursuing a zero-sum policy toward the Israeli–Palestinian conflict? Was it correct to base its pro-Palestinian stand on the absence of relations with Israel? Does diplomatic relation with a country indicate India’s approval of that country’s domestic or foreign policies? Did the presence of diplomatic missions signal India’s endorsement of the Iraqi annexation of Kuwait or the British invasion of the Falklands? Having established a strong link between support for Palestinians and absence of relations with Israel, Rao’s decision exposed the vulnerability of the moral argument. The Palestine card lost its relevance in the inter-Arab politics after the Kuwait crisis. Thus, the absence of relations with Israel during the Cold War and normalization could be explained as a realist choice dressed up in moral arguments. The moral aspect of Palestine policy gets complicated when one looks at the contradictory positions adopted by India vis-à-vis partitions of India and Palestine.

Federal Palestine versus Partitioned India

On September 1, 1947, the 11-member United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) finalized its report over the future of post-British Palestine; while a seven-member majority advocated partition as the solution, supported by Iran and Yugoslavia, India proposed a Federal Palestine. The Indian plan advocated autonomous Arab and Jewish states within a unified Palestine (Agwani, 1971). This idea was in line with the Congress Party’s position since the late 1930s and was proposed under explicit instructions from Nehru (National Archives of India [NAI], 1947). The proposal for a Federal Palestine was diametrically opposed to the Congress Party’s position regarding the future of British India and was made exactly two weeks after the subcontinent was partitioned along communal lines. Despite its long struggle for an inclusive country, the Congress accepted a religion-based division for India but still chose to propose a unified Palestine.

Partition was a way out for India, but Federation was presented as the option for Palestine. Such an approach ignored some of the glaring sociopolitical discrepancies that existed between the two cases. The Arab–Jewish relations in Palestine were complicated, and the gulf was insurmountable than the Hindu–Muslim relations in the subcontinent. Despite the Congress–League political rivalry and partition riots, the Hindu–Muslim tensions were far less than the Arab–Jewish relations in Palestine. Moreover, during the crucial period leading up to partition, the Congress Party was led by the venerable Muslim personality, Azad. The post-partition communal violence did not inhibit a large number of Muslims from opting to stay behind rather than migrate to Pakistan. As per the 2010 estimates, India has more Muslims than Pakistan and Bangladesh (PEW, 2012).

The situation in Palestine was different and the inter-communal situation on the eve of British departure was acute. As Abdur Rahman, India’s representative in the UNSCOP, informed Nehru, the British administration, Potash Company along the Dead Sea, and oil refinery in Haifa were the only places where Arabs and Jews worked under the same roof. Even Communism which prides itself of classless egalitarian internationalism was divided and Palestine had two distinct branches for Arabs and Jews (NAI, 1947). These problems were not taken into consideration when India advised the Jews and Arabs to coexist under a federal Palestine. The Indian plan also had a personal angle. Shortly after rejecting any link between religion and nationalism, Abdul Rahman emigrated to Pakistan, the country formed on religion-based national identity.

It is possible to argue that the Indian leaders wanted the Arabs and Jews of Palestine to avoid the painful example of the communal partition that India underwent and hence offered a solution that could not be implemented in India. Nehru’s differing approach to religion-based national identity in British India and Mandate Palestine could not be ignored. Partition was seen as a sign of political realism for India but an immoral preposition for Palestine. Thus, Nehru and his colleagues offered a solution to Palestine that they were not prepared to adopt in a more favorable Indian context.

This duality toward partition also escaped closer scrutiny and Indian discussions continue to link the Palestine issue to India’s opposition to religious-based states. Indeed, shortly after meeting Isaac Herzog, Israel’s leader of opposition in Jerusalem, President Mukherjee told reporters:

I said that religion cannot be the basis of State. For example, in large number of Arab countries, Islam is the religion; but on the basis of religion all Arabs countries have not converged into one state. Pakistan was created out of India on the basis of religion in 1947. A large chunk came out of Pakistan and became an independent sovereign state within 25 years. That is the point I which I explained to the Leader of Opposition and other Members f the Israeli Parliament. (Ministry of External Affairs [MEA], 2015)

Thus, the Indian leaders still do not see a problem in their contradictory stands vis-à-vis the two partitions. The Federal Plan also underlined India’s limited understanding of the UN.

Political Inexperience

The Federal Plan exhibited India’s nascent understanding of international politics. The UN is not a legal body but a political entity of sovereign states whose decisions are shaped exclusively by political acceptability rather than their juridical value. When it was elected to the UNSCOP in May 1947, India was weeks away from independence and a degree of utopianism was understandable. Nehru, who was heading the Interim Government since November 1946, was quick to recognize the potential importance of the Palestine issue and asked Asaf Ali to represent India in the First Special Session of the General Assembly; Nehru was also keen for membership of the proposed UN committee (Kumaraswamy, 2010, p. 87). During the debates in the UN, India supported decolonization and opposed imperialism but its approach lacked political acumen and diplomatic savvy. Within the UNSCOP, support for the Indian plan came only from Iran (sole Muslim-majority state) and Yugoslavia. Partition Plan, on the other hand, enjoyed the support of seven members with Australia endorsing neither of the plans.

A more devastating blow to India came from the Arabs, a party whose interests Nehru sought to champion. He was unable to recognize or unprepared to accept the vehement Arab opposition to any minimal political concessions to the Jews. The Arabs of Palestine as well as of the neighboring countries were not enamored by the idea of granting limited communal autonomy to the Jews even within a federal Arab state. Egged by Pakistan, the Arab states proposed a unitary option that sought to annul everything that had happened in Palestine since the late nineteenth century, especially the Jewish immigration and the Balfour Declaration. As Nehru subsequently lamented before the Constituent Assembly on December 4, 1947:

[The Arab states were] so keen on the unitary state idea and were so sure of at any rate preventing partition or preventing two-third majority in favor of partition, that they did not accept our suggestion. When, during the last few days, partition somehow suddenly became inevitable, and it was realized that the Indian solution was probably the best … a last-minute attempt was made in the last 48 hours to bring forward the Indian solution not by us but by those who wanted a unitary state. It was then too late. (Constituent Assembly Debates, 1947)

At the same time, the Zionists rejecting the Indian plan was inevitable; the Federal Plan offered civil and religious rights to the Jews, while the Partition Plan offered them political rights and sovereignty. Thus, while the majority plan had the support of one of the two contending parties, namely the Jews, the minority Federal Plan was rejected by both.

Moreover, the attitude of concerned parties toward partition was different in Palestine and India. The ideological differences did not inhibit the Congress Party and Muslim League from accepting partition as the solution to end the British rule. This was not the case for Palestine and the Arab leaders, both within and outside Palestine, vehemently opposed any political division of Mandate Palestine leading to the formation of a Jewish homeland. This position was maintained until the Algiers Declaration of November 1988 that heralded the Palestinian acceptance of the Partition Plan and the formation of State of Palestine that coexists with Israel.

Thus, in spite of knowing the Arab–Jewish tensions and differences over the future of Palestine, India failed to consider the feasibility of a federal option and the likelihood of its acceptance by the Arabs. Indeed, opposing the Indian plan was the only issue that the Jews and Arabs agreed on in 1947. Rejected also by the Arabs, the Indian plan was never discussed in the UN and was consigned to history. Once again, this critical factor does not figure in Indian discussions on Palestine and the Federal Plan.

Conclusion

If justice, anti-colonialism, or national self-determination were the driving principles behind the Indian Palestine policy, then the deprivation of the national rights of the Kurds and various other minority populations in the Middle East should have evoked some attention, support, or at least discussion within the country. This, however, is not the case. Many do not want to ascribe “occupation” to the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in July 1974 and its military presence since then. Anti-colonialism and anti-imperialism were not the only prisms through which India and its leaders viewed the Palestine issue. Since the early 1920s, the Indian nationalists perceived the Arab–Jewish conflict through an exclusive Islamic prism and its claims to Palestine. The erstwhile Congress–League political contest for domestic Muslim support transformed into Indo-Pakistan diplomatic rivalry in the Middle East after 1947. Though the pro-Palestine policy, especially the prolonged non-relations, was explained through a moral argument, it was considerably shaped by realism and a recognition of India’s limited political leverages vis-à-vis the Arab-Islamic Middle East. Thus, the moral prism is insufficient to explain the normalization of relations with Israel and the bonhomie since then.